To coordinate the 1757 campaign in America, Lord Loudoun commanded the governors of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and North Carolina to attend a strategy conference, [112] which met in March at Philadelphia. Here Loudoun informed Dobbs and the other royal executives that the new campaign would be concentrated in the northern colonies, while the southern provinces were to act largely defensively and cooperatively, particularly in South Carolina, where attack was deemed most likely. Loudoun expected that North Carolina would furnish four hundred soldiers for the coming year, the least number of men required of any southern colony. Two hundred of these new provincials were ordered to serve outside their home province, where they would receive the "King's Provisions from the time they arrive in South Carolina."

To bolster the southern forces, Loudoun planned to ship one battalion of British redcoats under Lt. Col. Henry Bouquet to Charleston from his army in New York. [113]

North Carolina now had its orders: "I must immediately call our Assembly to enable me to send 200 men to assist South Carolina," Dobbs reported to the Board before leaving Philadelphia for home. [114]

Upon his return to New Bern, Dobbs immediately issued a proclamation for the legislature to meet on May 13th, to raise the troops and supplies required under the Philadelphia plan to defend South Carolina and their own frontier. [115]

With a sense of urgency, Dobbs addressed the lower house a few days later. [116]

"We should join our utmost Force to secure our Southern Provinces from any attack," he urged the delegates while he informed them of the quota of troops they were obliged to supply "in supporting his Majesty's Rights and our Holy Religion, Liberties and Possessions." With expectations that the House would promptly authorize the four hundred men he requested, he further recommended a provision for the salary of a new storekeeper of the ordnance and powder expected shortly at Fort Johnston. The Assembly responded to Dobbs the next day, assuring him of their desire to "readily and cheerfully join in all such salutary measures" necessary to defeat the French, according to the colony's "Power and Ability." [117]

Despite these assurances, however, the house saw fit to provide only enough funds "to raise 2 companies of 100 men each" for six months service in South Carolina "or at home," with a £5 enlistment bonus allowed to facilitate recruitment. [118]

This was only half the requested number of men Loudoun expected. Toward the end of the session, the Council and Assembly came to disagree over the length of time the troops were to serve, the amount granted, and the taxes authorized to raise the funds. After several conferences of members of each body, the lower house generally prevailed. The bill that eventually passed authorized £5,300 for the King's use; that the troops serve in South Carolina for six instead of twelve months; and that a tax of four shillings, six pence per poll was to be levied for these military expenses and for paying the principal and interest on prior outstanding bills. In a somewhat conciliatory spirit near the end of the session the assemblymen conceded to allow Dobbs the discretion of employing the provincial companies in any province he saw fit "to be more necessary for his Majesty's Service." With these limited measures passed, the house adjourned on May 30th, prorogued until November 21st. [119]

While the delegates returned to their homes, the military situation in South Carolina intensified. The moment the assembly adjourned, Dobbs received orders from Loudoun to send the two newly authorized North Carolina companies "as soon as they can be possibly ready to South Carolina and also to have the Militia along the Southern Frontier ready to go upon the first notice from Coll. Bouquet." Dobbs and the Council alerted two thirds of the militia of the four southern counties to assist South Carolina upon the first notice they received from that colony's governor. [120]

Although Bouquet arrived in Charleston with troops of his own Royal American Regiment in June, followed by a Highland Regiment from Britain in September, no threat from either French troops or Indians on the frontier materialized. All of the regulars were eventually shipped back north the following Spring, along with Bouquet. During Bouquet's brief command in the south, he did not call on the North Carolinians for assistance. [121]

Although the colony raised its two provincial companies to aid South Carolina as ordered, these men were never shipped to Charleston. Dobbs was forced to revoke his own orders to forward the companies, as there were no quarters, or supplies available to them in South Carolina, and that colony made it almost impossible for North Carolina to bring in its own supplies for the troops. Dobbs wrote angrily of the lack of inter-colonial cooperation:

"Had we sent our companies to Charles Town we would have been in great distress to have paid them ... Everything we would send at above 60 per cent Loss; they had laid a Tax equal to a Prohibition on our Naval Stores, and refused to take it off even so far as to pay the Troops we sent. The Beeves I sent all took Distemper, and Mr. Stead Agent Victualer said they [the South Carolinians] would not pay for burying them, and if they had lived we should have lost above 60 per cent upon the first cost."

Additionally, the South Carolinians refused to remove the duties on all naval stores coming into their province, commodities which Dobbs hoped to sell there as a means of supporting the North Carolinians sent to assist Bouquet. "I think it is very impolite of them," Dobbs understated. [122]

As the conflict continued unfavorably for Great Britain in 1757 in the northern theatre, the year was militarily uneventful for North Carolina, and most of its population showed little interest in the war. The provincial companies, not needed by Bouquet in South Carolina, were sent instead to garrison the coastal fortifications, while one company of provincials raised the previous year was stationed in Pennsylvania. Loudoun hoped that these troops in the north would eventually enlist in the Royal Americans, though few joined the regulars. [123] Recruiting parties from the Royal American Regiment appeared in New Bern and in Rowan County, but few men enlisted, despite the colony having about thirteen thousand men nominally on the militia rolls that summer. The few recruits who did enlist "no sooner join the regiment and are Cloathd but they immediately desert" without "the least chance of ever getting them again." The recruiters noted that although there were "men enough Scattered in the back Part of the two Carolinas," the wages for other labors were high enough that the settlers "despise our pay, and those who inlist, being the worste, desert very Soon." These men were also described in a letter to Loudoun as "the worst that perhaps your Lordship ever saw." [124]

Dobbs later reported to the war office that the few men who did enlist in the regular army were "daily deserting by the Villany of the Bulk of the People of this province; who countenance Desertion by Concealing Deserters and with filling their Heads with wrong Notions of the Service." [125]

Meanwhile, many frontier settlers, particularly the pietistic Moravians of Wachovia, "kept Strict Watch and have secured our Settlement with Stocades ... to prevent a Surprize and blood shedding on both Sides." Fortunately, Dobbs reported in December, the province "was still free from any Incursions of the Indians ... having kept 2 Companies on the Western Frontier." This lack of an external threat no doubt explains in part the reluctance of Carolinians to "take the king's shilling" and enlist in a regular battalion that summer. [126]

The end of the year marked a watershed for North Carolina, and for Britain's waging of the war as well. As noted above, Pitt's assumption of leadership in the prosecution of an all-out fight against France as Secretary of State for the Southern Department in late 1756 led quickly to aggressive measures in America and elsewhere. "His single-minded purpose was to win the war," and Pitt made an aggressive campaign against France in the New World official crown policy. He often bypassed Loudoun, and appealed directly to colonial governors for men and supplies for military campaigns, avoiding the invocation of royal prerogative. Instead, the popular Pitt encouraged North Carolina and the other colonies to grant aid with unprecedented promises of reimbursement of provisions and expenses, "because he believed the cooperation of American colonials was essential to winning the war." As Fred Anderson has recently noted, "Pitt resolved to treat [the colonies] like allies, offering subsidies to encourage their assemblies to aid in the conquest of New France." [127]

Cooperation and coordination in place of requisitions and demands would now be the method the Empire employed with the colonies for the rest of the war in America. Pitt's December 30, 1757 letter to Dobbs and the southern governors was typical of this revised approach in colonial relations. He asked the governors to:

"...use your utmost Endeavors and Influence with the Council & assembly of your Province to induce them to raise, with all possible dispatch, as large a Body of Men ... as the Number and Situation of its inhabitants may allow ... and that you direct them to hold themselves in readiness ... The King is further pleased to furnish all the Men with, as raised above, with Arms, Ammunition, & Tents, as well as to order Provisions to be issued to the same, by His Majesty's Commissaries, in the same Proportion & Manner, as it is done to the rest of the King's Forces." [128]

The second major change for North Carolina at the close of 1757 was of a more immediate concern than Pitt's imperial policy. The cordial and largely cooperative relationship that existed between the governor and the Assembly up to this time began to disappear. As Dobbs' biographer has observed, "The first signs of disunity, and the rise of a dissentient group in opposition to Dobbs' administration, became apparent towards the close of the year," [129] which would in the years ahead greatly curtail the colony's contribution toward eventual English victory over the French in Canada, and their Cherokee allies in the forests of the southern backcountry. During the contentious legislative assembly which began November 22nd, a perturbed Governor Dobbs found the lower house "crusty in granting any money for public services," [130] and "could only be prevailed upon keeping on foot three companies of 50 men each ... instead of 300 they raised and paid last year." [131]

Dobbs could not help but reprove the House for its "Parsimony at this critical Time," [132] and regretted the refusal of the assembly to allow a storekeeper for the munitions at Fort Johnston, "though recommended to them by the King in Council." [133]

Both Dobbs and Loudoun regarded the reduction in support for the war effort as "impolitick," as it threatened to jeopardize the amount of an intended reimbursement the colony was to receive from London for military expenses, to be allotted according to the services each province had performed, or would perform. [134]

With "exaggerated ideas of the prerogative of the Crown," [135] Dobbs became engaged in a struggle with the Assembly and other prominent colonial officials over land reform, paper currency, land titles and the collection of quitrents, a struggle which acted to prevent concerted action in North Carolina to provide troops, provisions and money to fight the war in and out of the province. Several powerful Councilors and colonial officials were accused by Dobbs of comprising a "junto" bent on making him "unpopular with the Assembly," and acting against royal privilege, which curtailed the proper support of the crown's military efforts in America. [136]

The Assembly sought the "right to legislate freely, to control the internal affairs of the colony and to enjoy the same rights and privilege's as their English brethren," [137] none of which were in accord with Arthur Dobbs' ideas of deference, authority and royal prerogative. The growing discord between Dobbs, the Assembly and several powerful Carolinians increasingly disrupted the cordiality, good will and harmony in North Carolina and led directly to a stiffening reluctance on the part of the colony's lower house to answer Britain's call for men and money by the latter months of 1758.

The diminishing assistance provided by the North Carolina Assembly in response to imperial commands from 1754 to 1757 can be understood in part by reemphasizing the colony's poor economic condition and its remoteness from the seat of war. Dobbs assessment of provincial finances, written in January 1755, can be used to characterize the entire state of financial affairs for the period which led up to the meeting of the assembly in November, 1757:

"Considering the late divided state of this Province, and the ill state of the Revenue here, and great Debt upon account of the paper Bills formerly and lately issued, which must be discharged, and there being a Necessity for to raise this by a further paper Currency or issuing the Bills already appropriated to other uses, there being neither Bullion nor Coin in the Country, by which troops can be paid when they go out of the province, and the present ill state of the Currency ... under this Situation & Circumstances, this sum [£8000] is as much as they can find ways and means to supply." [138]

The lack of a significant, external military threat to North Carolina may also have lead house members, the majority of whom were from the established, coastal regions of the province, to decrease the amount of aid voted to fight a war that was fought largely in the northern colonies, and to a lesser extent, in the distant wilderness of the sparsely settled (and unrepresented) backcountry. Other than several violent Indian forays on the western frontier, no battles were fought within the colony's borders during the first half of the war, and the coastal batteries received no French attacks. In a similar manner, earlier American colonial wars involving Great Britain , France and Spain had not appreciably involved North Carolina, and left no tradition of inter-colonial military cooperation there by 1754. [139] More subtle characteristics of the colony's modest participation in the first four years of the French and Indian War were difficult for Dobbs, Loudoun, and their British superiors to acknowledge. The Assembly's consistent and willful use of its prerogative as it saw fit to grant and allocate its soldiers, supplies and money to the royal government for waging war on a world-wide stage highlighted a significant aspect of Britain's imperial structure: the Empire did not function through "the language of control and command" with regard to North Carolina, and British metropolitanism was curtailed by the lower house's control of the colony's purse strings and its own desires with regard to aiding the empire's prosecution of the war. [140]

The diminishing amount of aid voted by the house at each successive legislative session demonstrates the situation in North Carolina in which metropolitan authorities were unable to impose their demands for assistance. Had Dobbs, Loudoun, Pitt and other British officials in London looked back and examined with scrutiny North Carolina's military contributions from the commencement of hostilities on the Ohio in 1754 to the May session of the lower house in 1757, they may have been able to recognize this growing pattern of unwillingness and inability on the part of the colony to contribute its men and money to the war, a recognition of which would have forewarned the Crown's army officers and colonial administrators of the difficulties to be faced with the province's assembly beginning in November, 1757. From Dinwiddie's first call for assistance in February 1754, to the adjournment of the legislature on May 30, 1757, North Carolina reduced its commitment to the war substantially as each session of the assembly met, despite the generally harmonious and amiable relations between the house and Governor Dobbs.

The colony's greatest allowance of aid was also its first contribution, made in early 1754. Ten months later, though Dobbs was "commanded by his Majesty to recommend it to [the assembly] in the strongest manner to provide a supply to assist ... Virginia," [141] the house granted far fewer men than it previously had and reduced its financial contribution of new money by eighty per cent. The next year, even after Braddock's defeat left the frontier exposed to enemy incursions and depredations, the assembly drastically reduced its grant by ninety per cent, to just £800 of new paper currency, £9,200 in public bills from those already authorized in 1754 and three small provincial companies. By September 1756, a renewed concentration upon the colony's protection led assemblymen to approve a sum of £3,400 in new bills, none of which was designated for use outside of North Carolina. This limited grant solely for internal defense came notwithstanding an impassioned address by Dobbs, in which he required the house to "exert their utmost," [141] and the decline in expenditures for the war continued in North Carolina during 1757. By May of that year, the house granted only half the number of troops expected of them by the Crown's Commander in Chief, Lord Loudoun, for defense of the southern colonies.

An increased reluctance to grant money and troops was not the only indication of the lower house's refusal to relinquish its own prerogatives and to answer the crown's commands; the nature of British metropolitanism and imperial control can be discerned in other ways as well. Despite Dobbs recommendation to the Assembly in 1756 that any sums raised "be put under the direction of the Commander in Chief over all the Northern Colonies," [143] the house demonstrated no intention of allowing Britain to dictate in what manner its money would be spent. As noted above, in 1756 Loudoun thought better than to forcibly draft North Carolina's provincials into his regular battalions in New York, despite the acute British need for manpower and his clear authority to do so as commander of the British forces in America. The Assembly's refusal to provide funds to return home its men who declined further service, an expense it left to the British army, underlines an independent quality of the position the province assumed in its relationship with the Empire. Additionally, the colony's insistence on issuing paper money in defiance of the crown's well known aversion to the practice further reveals the limited effect imperial command had in the province. Perhaps the clearest demonstration of this provincial autonomy in the first half of the war came in May 1757, with the Assembly's grant of only half of the number of troops ordered by imperial authorities in America for the defense of the southern colonies, despite Loudoun's command (through Dobbs) for four hundred men "with the greatest dispatch. [144]

Perhaps too, North Carolina was partially representative of the British mainland colonies of the period, which, in the words of Jack P. Greene, included legislatures "...jealous of their local autonomy, determined to maintain control over all public spending, and resentful of the commanders insistence that they act in accordance with his commands, these bodies battled with commanders over the timing, size and disposition of military appropriations, provincial control over provincial forces, and the costs of quartering metropolitan troops, and when Loudoun took quarters by force, they denounced his actions as a violation of their constituents' sacred rights as English people." [145]

The application of much of Greene's description above to North Carolina is, however, to anticipate its role in the second half of the Seven Years War. Even with the colony's failure to maintain the level of support it first granted at the outset of the conflict, during the early years of the war North Carolina's legislature was willing to provide that which it considered appropriate and feasible both for its own defense and the metropolitan war effort--on its own restrictive terms. Dinwiddie received help from no other colony but his southern neighbor in early 1754, yet that year's campaign was a disastrous and ignominious failure for the provincials under Colonel Inns. Notwithstanding this debacle, North Carolina managed to send men to join Braddock the following summer, albeit a far smaller contingent than that which evaporated on the march to Winchester. These men of 1755 never saw a battle and most deserted at the first opportunity. Later, in spite of the chronic currency and munitions shortages in the province throughout the war, Carolinians allowed funds for the establishment and maintenance of a substantial frontier fort within their borders in order to protect its own backcountry settlers, at the same time they reduced aid to the crown. Ordnance sent from England to strengthen the coastal forts, built at great expense, rested silently in their gun carriages for years. To be sure, while the Assembly was habitually disinclined to grant aid "to support his Majesty's Rights and the safety of this Province" [146] in accordance with Dobbs' assertive expectations, the relationship between the governor and the members of the lower house were for the most part cordial and harmonious from Dobbs' arrival in the colony until the early fall of 1757. Yet despite this welcome geniality among its politicians, North Carolina's role in waging war as part of Britain's overseas empire with limited grants of military assistance in the form of provincials, provisions and paper bills can only be described as marginal, with little influence on the ultimate outcome of the conflict's events through 1757.